Conference Session

Curriculum and Instruction in Engineering Mechanics

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Brian P. Self, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Peter Michael Becker

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Diversity

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Mechanics

Paper ID #22281Teaching Mechanics in Another Country – Reflections on a Professorenaus-tauschDr. Brian P. Self, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Brian Self obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech, and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Utah. He worked in the Air Force Research Laboratories before teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy for seven years. Brian has taught in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo since 2006. During the 2011-2012 academic year he participated in a professor exchange, teaching at the Munich

Conference Session

Measuring Learning in Statics & Dynamics

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Meera NK Singh P.Eng, University of Calgary; Leszek Sudak P.Eng., University of Calgary; Philip Egberts P.Eng., University of Calgary

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Diversity

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Mechanics

gender. The high numbers in Mechanical Engineering reflect the overall size, relativeto Chemical Engineering (second largest), and Civil Engineering. As can be seen from the bottomof Table 2, the average school wide GPA was 2.57. The average GPA in the programs follows thesame order as the aforementioned minimum entrance requirements by program. This result is tobe expected, as those who did the best in first year would be expected to continue to achieve highresults in their second year. On the other hand, the material in Dynamics is more aligned with theinterests and strengths of Mechanical and Civil Engineers than with Chemical Engineers. Thisalignment may indicate that students are not necessarily enrolled in the program that is bestaligned

Conference Session

Addressing the Human Dimension in Teaching Statics, Dynamics, Mechanics

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sean Moseley, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Diversity

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Mechanics

engineering course is feasible without wholesale rethinking of the content.Hopefully, this paper will encourage statics instructors, and engineering instructors in general, toconsider taking steps to balance the EPS approach with acknowledgement of the human andsocial context in which engineering work takes place.MethodI identified example problems based on real-world situations that illustrate core technical ideaswithin the Statics curriculum. I then elaborated the problem description to place the situation in ahuman and social context. While keeping the technical questions basically unchanged, I added“Reflect” questions at the end of the problem.These questions require the student to move beyond the numbers, think about the relationshipbetween the

Conference Session

Mechanics Division Technical Session 3

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Amir Hedayati Mehdiabadi, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Rebecca A. Atadero, Colorado State University; Daniel W. Baker Ph.D., P.E., Colorado State University; Anne Marie Aramati Casper, Colorado State University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

their personal experiences, reflect on howthey are affected by the course, or critically assess the course curriculum and classroompedagogy” (p. 46). Moreover, as they argued, in traditional approaches, students’ knowledge andexperiences are often disregarded and more than not perceived as irrelevant to the coursecontent. Knowledge is treated as static, distant, and disembodied from class members (Ochoa &Pineda, 2008).Despite the sources of resistance that have been noted, other researchers have pointed out thepotential benefits of stretching engineering curriculum beyond technical content. Ochoa andPineda (2008) raised the importance of creating environments that benefit from collaboration byproviding democratic spaces to “enhance learning

Conference Session

Addressing the Human Dimension in Teaching Statics, Dynamics, Mechanics

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jacob Preston Moore, Pennsylvania State University, Mont Alto; Chris Venters, East Carolina University; Tracey Carbonetto, Penn State University, Lehigh Valley

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Diversity

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Mechanics

], which identifiesinterconnectedness of student understanding as the key difference between rote learning andmeaningful learning. Rote learning allows students to reflect back what they have been told andeven follow procedures when there are no deviations, but meaningful learning builds on that toadd conceptual understanding in a way that allows students to innovate and problem-solve increative ways. Because of the importance of innovation and problem-solving in engineeringeducation, it is particularly important to make sure engineering educators promote meaningfullearning, not just rote learning.Linking the discussion back to concept mapping, Pearsall and her colleagues [10] conducted astudy looking at student-generated concept maps over the

Conference Session

Dynamics

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Yan Tang, American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Haiyan Bai, University of Central Florida

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Diversity

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Mechanics

Page 26.483.5Given/Find, Strategy, Governing Equations, Numerical Solutions, and Reflection, commonly usedin advanced mechanics courses and upper-division engineering courses at ERAU. In Given/Find,students are required to use appropriate variables and notations to represent what is given and whatis to be found. By relating given information to relevant principles, tentative strategies along withthe associated rationale are presented in Strategy, followed by governing equations. When a systemof independent equations for the equal number of unknowns is obtained, Matlab is used to findnumerical solutions. Finally, the problem solving is concluded by students’ reflection on theproblem by verifying the correctness of the solution and discussing

Conference Session

Teaching & Learning Dynamics, Vibration, and Mechanics More Broadly

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Shawn P. Gross, Villanova University; David W Dinehart, Villanova University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

viewing data for the theory-based lecture videos that students areexpected to watch prior to class and the example problem solution videos are discussed in thispaper, but this accounts for more than 93 percent of the recorded material.Although extensive viewing statistics are available, a tremendous amount of data analysis andmanipulation is required to make sense of it and answer the research questions posed above.Raw data from Mediasite was downloaded in the form of two CSV data files for each video. Thedata was then assembled into an Excel file that was programmed to sort the data into a usableform. A total of 2886 individual lecture views reflecting over 428 hours of student viewing timehad to be categorized by student and by video title. For

Conference Session

Addressing the Human Dimension in Teaching Statics, Dynamics, Mechanics

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Eric Davishahl, Whatcom Community College

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Diversity

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Mechanics

StaticsAbstractKnowledge surveys ask students to report on their confidence that they can perform specifictasks aligned with course learning outcomes instead of asking students to complete said tasks.This approach allows these surveys to cover a broad range of course topics and cognitive levelswhile requiring a relatively short amount of time to complete. Administering the surveysmultiple times during a course offers a context for students to reflect on their own learningprogress and provides useful assessment data to the instructor. Knowledge survey applicationsdocumented in the science education literature include their use for both formative andsummative assessment of student learning, their use by faculty in assessing the effectiveness ofteaching methods, and

Conference Session

Hands-On in the Online Classroom

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Sarah Wodin-Schwartz P.E., Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Kimberly Lechasseur, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Caitlin A Keller, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

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Diversity

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Mechanics

students to discuss, critically analyze, and reflect upon the hands-on activitieswith their peers, it was necessary for students to complete the hands-on activities, to the best oftheir ability, before the live HOLD session. Each week, students were given a list of suppliesneeded for that week’s activities and a set of instructions. Students took selfies of completedactivities to document their individual work. They then attended the in-person HOLD sessionsand began by sharing their selfies and discussing their setups. They would reflect upon differentchallenges that arose and the pros and cons of different supply choices. Groups were givenchallenge questions to help them think beyond the activity and better understand the underlyingphysics within

Conference Session

Mechanics Division Technical Session 3

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ghada M. Gad, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Giuseppe Lomiento, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Yu Sun, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

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Diversity

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Mechanics

students’preferred learning styles, accommodation of such learning styles through different teachingapproaches, and finally the assessment of the student learning (Driscoll & Garcia, 2000).In order to better assess and accordingly accommodate student learning styles, researcherscategorized students’ learning styles in different ways usually on a bipolar continuum followingthe underlying fundamentals of learning: (1) processing of information: perception(sensing/intuitive), (2) input modality (visual/verbal), (3) organization (induction/deduction), (4)processing (sequential/global), and (5) understanding (active/reflective) (Driscoll & Garcia, 2000).Many assessment tools/surveys were developed to determine students’ learning styles that vary intheir

Conference Session

Explorations in Mechanics Pedagogy

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Devlin Montfort, Oregon State University; Shane A. Brown P.E., Oregon State University; Charles E. Riley, Oregon Institute of Technology; Luciana R. Barroso, Texas A&M University; David G. Pollock P.E., George Fox University; Jennifer Light, Lewis & Clark College; Adam Lenz, Oregon State University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

equations and calculations. The curricularmaterials developed in our workshop specifically target research-identified misconceptions, andare intended to help students distinguish between similar concepts.Lessons LearnedWe will present three general lessons we’ve learned through our collaboration and reflection. Inpresenting these findings we distinguish between researchers and instructors, but note that mostengineering educators perform some combination of the two roles. Additionally, we note thatmany of these lessons refer to commonly held intuitions about the interactions of research andpractice in education. We seek here to surface and further develop these intuitions intoproductive public discourse.1. We need to attend to the differences in

Conference Session

Assessment Strategies in Mechanics

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Geoffrey Recktenwald, Michigan State University; Michele J. Grimm, Michigan State University; Ron Averill, Michigan State University; Sara Roccabianca, Michigan State University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

bladder adaptive response, and (iii) understand the fundamental mechanisms that correlate the mechanical environment and the biological process of remodeling in the presence of an outlet obstruction. c American Society for Engineering Education, 2020 Effects of a New Assessment Model on Female and Under-Represented Minority StudentsAbstractIn 2016, Michigan State University developed a new model of classroom education andassessment in their Mechanics of Materials course. This model used a modified masteryapproach that stresses formative assessment, guidance in the problem-solving process, andstructured student reflection. We now refer to this new approach as SMART

Conference Session

Engaging the Online Classroom

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Jacob Matthew Cook, Oregon State University; Thomas W. Ekstedt, Oregon State University; Brian P. Self, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Milo Koretsky, Tufts University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

vectors and graphed parameters. Further work will include analyzing studentsurvey data to explain student perceptions and to determine how student comprehension andlearning compares between remote instruction vs. in-person.AcknowledgementsWe acknowledge the support from National Science Foundation (NSF) through grants DUE1821439 and 1821638. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressedare those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.References[1] J. D. Bransford and A. L. Brown, How People Learn: Body, Mind, Experience and School. Washington, D.C.: Commission on Behavioral and Social Science and Education, National Research Council, 2000.[2] J. Engelbrecht, C. Bergsten, and O. Kågesten

Conference Session

Concept Inventories in Mechanics

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Carisa H. Ramming, Oklahoma State University; Christopher Papadopoulos, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Eric Davishahl, Whatcom Community College; Brian P. Self, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Sinéad C. MacNamara, Syracuse University; Meredith Silberstein, Cornell University; Joan V. Dannenhoffer P.E., Syracuse University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

this orother process of deeper inquiry.Instructors can also receive useful feedback. Obviously, the results of an initial poll give awindow into what students initially grasp. Later, after repolling, the instructor can view thechange in the students’ responses and reflect upon the effectiveness (or lack thereof) ofadditional comments or explanations. It is indeed humbling for an instructor to experiencenegligible or even “incorrect” changes among students’ responses after “the perfect explanation”has been given. Hopefully, this is part of a formative process in which instructors can betteranticipate what students reasonably can – and cannot – absorb within a certain scope ofconversation or allotted time.Student Feedback:All three cohorts were

Conference Session

Curriculum and Instruction in Engineering Mechanics

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Peter H. Carnell P.E., University of Georgia; Nathaniel J. Hunsu, University of Georgia; Davis F. Ray, University of Georgia; Nicola W. Sochacka, University of Georgia

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Diversity

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Mechanics

that seeks to promote diversity and improve transdisciplinary collaboration within the college. Specifically, I serve on the Resilience in Engineering Education Project team aimed to investigate the effects that students’ resilience and professional skills have on exam performance in technical courses.Dr. Nicola W. Sochacka, University of Georgia Nicola W. Sochacka is the Associate Director of the Engineering Education Transformations Institute (EETI) in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. Dr. Sochacka’s research interests span interpretive research methods, STEAM (STEM + Art) education, empathy, diversity, and reflection. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Epistemologies and a Bachelor of

Conference Session

Teaching Methods for Engineering Mechanics Courses

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kate N. Leipold, Rochester Institute of Technology; Sarilyn R. Ivancic, Rochester Institute of Technology

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Diversity

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Mechanics

presenting the material in a way that iseasily remember by students. With this in mind, the ABCD mnemonic device was developed. Inclass, it is presented in bullet format as shown: • Ⓐ – All Forces • Ⓑ – Body • Ⓒ – Coordinates • Ⓓ – Dimensions (Only for rigid bodies) ⇒ Ⓔ of Ⓔ – Equations of Equilibrium(Stated – Your A, B, C and sometimes D drives your E of E).While the order of the ABCD does not reflect the order generally followed when physicallydrawing the FBD, it does serve as a reminder to check that everything is included. Students areencouraged to always write the letters “ABCD” on their homework and exam papers.In class, the process for drawing an FBD is outlined as follows. Initially students must identifyan appropriate

Conference Session

Statics Online

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Peggy C. Boylan-Ashraf, Stanford University; Sarah L. Billington, Stanford University; Sheri Sheppard, Stanford University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

these activitieswas not only to allow students to express their reasoning, reflect on their thinking, andobtain feedback on their understanding; but also to “catch” unengaged and uncoveredpreconceptions. Several examples of in-class activities are shown in Figure 1 below. Page 26.1672.4 Free-Body Free-Body Shear Force and Bending Diagram Activity Diagram Activity Moment Diagram Activity

Conference Session

Mechanics Division Technical Session 4

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Josue Njock Libii, Purdue University Fort Wayne

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Diversity

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Mechanics

on which it is due arerequired. They combine to give students the flexibility they require to gather what they need, tosecure the necessary space on campus or off campus, and to make workable arrangements forcommon dates and times on which to work together; to know each other; and to support eachother, while working toward a common goal. That is one way to begin community buildingamong commuter students.Note: This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through NSF Award#1565066. However, the opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not,necessarily, reflect those of the National Science Foundation.References [1]Jacoby, B. (1989). The student as commuter: Developing a comprehensive institutional

Conference Session

Teaching & Learning Dynamics, Vibration, and Mechanics More Broadly

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Geoff Rideout, Memorial University of Newfoundland

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Diversity

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Mechanics

rudimentary examples from the classroom sessions. Thehomework examples will evolve to reflect more real-world situations, with more open-endedproblems. A flipped format alone, without meaningful assessments, does not necessarily meanthe instructor is doing “less of the doing and thinking for the students”[12] simply by moving thesolving of closed-ended analysis problems from the home into the classroom.References[1] Dollar, A., and Steif, P. (2009) “A web-based statics course used in an inverted classroom.” Proc. AmericanSociety for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Austin, TX.[2] Wiggins, G., and McTighe, J. (2005) Understanding by design, 2ed., ASCD, Alexandria, VA.[3] King, A. (1993) “From sage on the stage to guide on the side.” College

Conference Session

Flipped Classrooms in Mechanics

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Yufeng Hu P.E., Western Michigan University; Javier Martin Montefort P.E., Western Michigan University; Edmund Tsang, Western Michigan University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

poorlyin subsequent courses.Traditionally, Statics has been taught in face-to-face lectures. The traditional lecture formatprevents the students from pausing to reflect and understand what is being explained and theymay often miss important points. A goal of Statics is to have students learn to solve problemsindependently, which is a practice-intensive and time-consuming effort for which the lecture canprovide guidance yet relatively little direct assistance. The traditional lecture is an instructor- Page 26.189.2centered, relatively passive method of learning. While lecturing still remains an effective andimportant way of conveying knowledge, it

Conference Session

Mechanics Classroom Demonstrations

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joel Alejandro Mejia, Angelo State University; Wade H Goodridge, Utah State University; Benjamin James Call, Utah State University - Engineering Education; Steven David Wood, Utah State University

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Diversity

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Mechanics

reflect on their work and analyze theirown problem solving approaches. For instance, some participants were able to use the physicalmanipulative so answer questions very quickly or to reinforce concepts. Some participants wereable to use the physical manipulative without problems, but other felt that the physicalmanipulative was not as intuitive and they required guidance. Although the physicalmanipulative was designed to be very user-friendly, some of the participants required a certaindegree of guidance on how to use the physical manipulative. Some of the participants didn’tknow what to observe or how to detach some of the members in the truss. Thus, theimplementation of the physical manipulative in an engineering mechanics course may